Driving (not fog) lights

[Norm Peterson]

You haven't described anything you couldn't have done with the appropriate Cibie lighting 45 years ago. The only differences being LED vs quartz-iodine and some difference in color temperature even if you don't get carried away with today's available big °K numbers for their own sake.

Was that too long to read?


Norm

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[H@mmer]

You haven't described anything you couldn't have done with the appropriate Cibie lighting 45 years ago. The only differences being LED vs quartz-iodine and some difference in color temperature even if you don't get carried away with today's available big °K numbers for their own sake.

Was that too long to read?


Norm

Packaging. That is the difference.
I'm talking about a 3" light that will fit in your stock fog location.

 

[Nate B]

Thank you for all of the input! I will TRY to remember to post back here if and when I do figure out what I do with lighting. I really like the idea of the dual pencil/driving of the Baja Squadrons. While I really like the stock mounting option, I'm not so hot on the worm-burner low mounting location or the weirdo quad-circle look. I'm pretty sure I don't want to full-on S197 it with the twin 6-inch lamps prominently in the grille, which is why I'm considering something behind the grille... except that makes it really hard to keep them clean. But I'm also contemplating a custom grille of my own design, so maybe I'll make it hinged for cleaning access... DECISIONS!

In any case, I've already FORSCAN-ed around in the car and found the Brights+Fogs switch, which gives me full lighting control with the factory switches if I do put something in the fog pockets.

 

[Nate B]

That's best option probably. Anyone know what's required or if possible? My 05 Silverado had 6 high mod done. I believe all it took was a couple diodes

If I were to wire something in with the high beams, I would probably tap off of the high-beam wires and fire a relay that would pass on a separately-fused circuit straight from the battery to the add-on lights. That way, you aren't taxing the high-beam circuit for more than what it was designed and you can then use mondo-gauge wire (like 12ga or 10ga) straight off the battery to give every ounce of juice to the aux lights.

 

[Cueball]

So you can use a Forscan tool to enable the fogs with high beams? I would need to borrow one - that is a very desirable choice for some people, legal or not.

 

[Nate B]

People that keep suggesting Hella or PIAA are living in the past. Neither company leads the industry anymore.
Your top companies are Rigid, VisionX, KC, and Baja Designs when it comes to offroad/auxiliary lighting. And BD is far and away the top performer in the category.
I wouldn't really trust the opinions of people the rednecked up some shit 40 years ago, I trust my money to the SCORE guys doing 100+mph in Baja. And they all use the aforementioned brands.
Also, it just so happens that we have mounting brackets and lights that perfectly fit on our cars.

Asking for advice here, don't take this as me telling your you're wrong... I'm not any sort of lighting expert, but I would tend to trust a company like Hella or Cibié, someone who makes OEM fixtures for major automobile manufacturers, someone who's been around and has a record of long-term reliability. Sure, the desert racer guys use BD, etc., for about a week once per year, probably new fixtures every year. They have any data anywhere on long-term reliability? I mean, I know an LED chip has a 50,000 life, but only if it's used, mounted, and heat-sunk correctly. Are bad solder joints on internal circuitry going to mess with me after a couple of seasons of humid 100°F to dry -10°F?

I mean, not that Wikipedia is the end-all, be-all, but...
Hella: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hella_(company)
Cibié: https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cibié (mais oui, il est la poo poo!)
Even KC, who's been around a while: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KC_HiLiTES
Baja Designs: ...?

 

[Nate B]

So you can use a Forscan tool to enable the fogs with high beams? I would need to borrow one - that is a very desirable choice for some people, legal or not.

FORSCAN is the software, there are threads on this site and others (Fusion, Focus, F-150) that go through the whole procedure and have lists of available changes.

Basically, $21-$80 for a bluetooth OBDII dongle (mine's the $21 variety, I'm sure there are also wired USB adapters) + Free (for now) FORSCAN software (but you still need to get it licensed via e-mail) and have a knack for a little hacking. This particular option is called Bambi mode. My car also now boots up with the GT animation instead of the horse and I've got police-dark mode turned on. Kinda like messing with your PC's registry and I hear you can probably knacker up some things if you screw with the wrong stuff, but I like to live dangerously.

 

[H@mmer]

Asking for advice here, don't take this as me telling your you're wrong... I'm not any sort of lighting expert, but I would tend to trust a company like Hella or Cibié, someone who makes OEM fixtures for major automobile manufacturers, someone who's been around and has a record of long-term reliability. Sure, the desert racer guys use BD, etc., for about a week once per year, probably new fixtures every year. They have any data anywhere on long-term reliability? I mean, I know an LED chip has a 50,000 life, but only if it's used, mounted, and heat-sunk correctly. Are bad solder joints on internal circuitry going to mess with me after a couple of seasons of humid 100°F to dry -10°F?

I mean, not that Wikipedia is the end-all, be-all, but...
Hella: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hella_(company)
Cibié: https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cibié (mais oui, il est la poo poo!)
Even KC, who's been around a while: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KC_HiLiTES
Baja Designs: ...?

If you read on their website, they talk about to what IP standards they engineer to. Hell, Rigid even has videos of taking saws to their lights and the portion of the light before the cut keeps on working.

My experience is with VisionX, Rigid, and Baja Designs. The Rigid are spotty on their quality (half of the ones I've had have been beat, banged, sunk, frozen, etc and been perfect, the other half get condensation in them [but i've never had one to actually fail to light]) and perform well. VisionX has great quality, but they're a little behind on their performance compared to the other two (but miles ahead any halogen offering I've tried). BD has the quality and performance. Raptor guys (I'm not talking the mall crawlers, I'm talking the guys that rape these trucks in the desert and the snow [Look up the Snoball. Yearly Raptor excursion in the UP]) abuse the hell out of their trucks and their gear. I've never heard people complain about BD other than their price.

I've had other shit on my truck fail, but never any of my lights. And right now I have a collection of BD and Rigid. Hell, if I hadn't hit a snow bank hard enough to bend my tube-steel bumper I probably wouldn't have any condensation in one of my Rigid lights.

I'm a bit of a light snob. I've tried the traditional brands, I've tried some old school stuff, I've tried the expensive and the cheap.
At this point in my off-road "career" it's Baja Designs for me all the way. I have Rigids in one mounting location on my truck because BD doesn't make anything the specific size I need to fit there.

 

[Norm Peterson]

Packaging. That is the difference.
I'm talking about a 3" light that will fit in your stock fog location.

If you absolutely must fit your light into a 3" space, then you do what you gotta do.

But I'm pretty sure that physical size and dimensional tolerances both enter into the picture at least as far as beam control is concerned . . . for example, you can't put the entire source of illumination whether it's a filament or an LED chip right at a reflector's focal point, and a mm of "off-centeredness" is going to be a more severe error for a 3" reflector than that same 1mm would be for a 6".


Norm

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